The Emperor's Soul

Executive Summary: I'd say a “surprisingly” good novella, but this is Brandon Sanderson we're talking about, and there is very little he's written that I haven't enjoyed. Plus there is the whole Hugo Award thing..Full ReviewI'm not really a fan of Novellas and short stories. It seems like the world building and character depth is always lacking. Often times things seem to end just as they are getting good. Plus, they always feel overpriced for me. Given the accolades for this (not to mention really getting my money's worth from [b:Words of Radiance 17332218 Words of Radiance (The Stormlight Archive, #2) Brandon Sanderson https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1391535251s/17332218.jpg 16482835]) I felt I couldn't pass this one by.I'm glad I did. This one is well worth it. It starts a bit slow, but Mr. Sanderson packs in excellent world building, a cool magic system and some enjoyable characters in such a small package. Though, it's not really that small as it did take me 2 nights to read.I will say I'm stumped as to how it relates to Elantris at all however. I just finished listening to that book, and this doesn't seem to tie in at all. Maybe that will become more clear if/when he writes a sequel to it. For someone like me obsessed with reading things in publication order, I'll say you can safely read this without having read Elantris, and this is definitely a lot better in my opinion.Like most Sanderson books the end is nearly impossible to put down. If the pacing had been that way through the whole thing, it would have been an easy 5 stars from me. That's really the only drawback.I certainly hope we get more of this magic system (and ideally the protagonist Shai) in the future.